


Just the Beginning

by neversleeps



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Marriage Proposal, Plans For The Future, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversleeps/pseuds/neversleeps
Summary: "I would give it up in a second to be your husband, partner, father of your kids." Alternative post-s6 story. My take on Damon and Elena's happy, if slightly rocky, relationship after she wakes up from Kai's spell. Some cute, sexy, domestic, hurtful and sweet times they share along the way.
Relationships: Elena Gilbert/Damon Salvatore
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	Just the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Well, guys, I decided to post this story on AO3 as well because I love AO3, so if I can't donate, I will contribute with posting more stories here. This was written about three years ago. The fic starts five years after season 6 (I actually calculate the timeline and all; I'm a Virgo!), and it completely ignores everything that happened in seasons 7 and 8, since I couldn't bring myself to watch them anyway. This is my wish fulfillment of how I imagine DE meet up after being separated and what their life together is going to look like.

"No…”

He’s too late. Not even his vampire speed can help when the first thing he can see is Bonnie falling down, a gaping wound in her chest. The heretic didn’t get to her heart, but he was too damn close. Damon rushes to the attacker, ducking a swing and ripping his heart out as he goes, and drops to his knees next to Bonnie.

Blood, there’s too much blood, too little time. He may be late. Any second now, he may be late. Acting on an instinct, he bites his wrist.

“Don’t.”

He can’t make out the word at first, but Bonnie says it again, opening her eyes and looking at him with surprising clarity.

“You can’t heal me,” she whispers. “It’s too late. The blood may not work. It may turn me into a vampire.”

“It can-” Damon pauses as the meaning of those words sinks into him, a helpless, empty feeling settling in his stomach. The catch Kai was talking about. He promised there was no way to work around the spell. If they tried to, Elena would die. He doesn’t know if turning Bonnie into a vampire counted, but-

“You can’t risk it. I can’t, either. She’s my best friend. I can’t do that.”

“Bonnie…” His heart is breaking, because she is dying, but also because she is making that choice. And it kills him to know that he would be making that choice – _is_ making it – too.

He cares about few people in the world as much as he cares about Bonnie, but one thing didn’t really change. _If it comes down to you and the witch again, I’ll gladly let Bonnie die. I will always choose you._

Maybe not “gladly,” but with the same unflinching certainty.

“It’s okay, Damon.” Her words are barely audible; if he weren’t a vampire, he probably wouldn’t catch that. “Tell Elena… I said hi.”

“Bonnie?” he stares at her, unable to believe that this is happening, but he doesn’t need to shake her or check for pulse to know what his senses tell him. She’s gone.

He has never hated Kai more than now. He has never hated himself more, because even as he is hurting, furiously wiping away at stray tears, there’s an ugly, selfish being hiding in his heart that feels the first stirrings of hope.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie.” He touches her cool hand, breathing in and out shakily. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He knows he has to get up and run somewhere, do something, but he needs a few minutes to say goodbye. That’s the least she deserved. He thinks Ric is there, saying something, asking something, but he doesn’t listen.

And then his phone rings.

* * *

The first thing she sees is blurry blue lines. She blinks, trying to make sense of them until she realizes she’s looking at the ceiling, the abstract pattern of the wallpaper making her head spin.

She looks around and finds herself in a small hotel room with a double bed, her body resting on soft white sheets. The stand lamp on the bedside table casts strange shadows around the room, a bouquet of roses in a vase right next to it. She reaches for the card automatically, without thinking, before she suddenly remembers how she fell asleep.

The wedding, Damon standing opposite her, his eyes telling her every word Ric was saying to Joe, Kai, screams, saying goodbyes, dancing with Damon, kissing him… and then nothing.

Hand trembling, she takes the small envelope and pulls out the card. She recognizes the handwriting, and it makes her eyes water.

_“Today is April 15, 2018. I love you._

_Damon.”_

It’s been five years. She has been sleeping for five years. And Bonnie died when she wasn’t even 26 yet.

Tears she’s been withholding are falling freely now, and a heavy, heart-wrenching sob makes her whole body shake. And another one. And one more.

The door opens, an elderly woman peeping into the room.

“Honey, you’re awake!” she says cheerfully. “Now, now, don’t cry. Do you want water? Or maybe something to eat?”

She wants both, but finds herself cowering instead, clutching a blanket to that same bridesmaid’s dress and wiping at the tears.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“Damon asked me to look after you while you were sleeping. He warned me it might take quite a bit, but finally, here you are. My name is Karen, I’m the housekeeper here. You’re Elena, right?”

“Yeah,” she confirms warily, not quite ready to trust this stranger yet, though it does seem like she’s been compelled. “You didn’t tell me where I am. And where is Damon?”

Karen shrugs. “Wherever he came from, I suppose. You can call him. There’s a phone in the drawer.” She points to it. “And you’re in Dallas, Elena. In Texas.”

She laughs at the ridiculousness of her first thought. “I’ve never been to Texas.”

“Well, now you have.” Karen winks. “I’ll go fix you some soup. There’s a change of clothes in the closet, and the shower has hot water, if you’d like to freshen up. There’s even a bathtub.”

She leaves, and Elena yanks the drawer open, grabbing the phone. It has only five contacts – Jeremy, Caroline, Damon, Ric and Stefan. She dials Damon’s number, clutching the phone so tightly she’s worried she might crush it. It feels like she heard his voice just a moment ago, but he hasn’t heard hers for five years, and she can’t begin to imagine how he’ll react, what he’s going to do.

His voice is beautiful and pained and everything she needs to hear right now.

“Elena?”

“It’s me, Damon.” Then, pushing down another sob, she adds. “I love you, too.”

* * *

That’s the most amazing sound he’s ever heard. His chest tightens more than it already has, and his free hand trembles, unable to cope with the need to reach out and touch her.

“How are you feeling? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice sounds just as broken as his, but he exhales in relief. “Is Bonnie..?”

He can’t say it at first, because he sees her dead body and the loss is still too fresh, and it hurts. Taking a deep breath, he manages to say it. “Yes. She’s dead. I’m sorry, Lena.”

Elena doesn’t say anything for a long time, but he can hear her breathing. He keeps quiet, too, letting her take her time.

“I’m going to miss her.” She chokes on the words, and it takes him all his strength not to break down, too. After a pause, she adds: “Why am I in Texas?”

He almost laughs at that. “I had to keep you away from here. It was too dangerous for you.”

She sighs. “Damon… can I come home now?”

Most of all, he wishes he didn’t have to tell her this. But he does.

“No. Not yet. There are still some heretics on the loose. Not many, but until I’m done with that, I don’t want you to be near here.”

“When can I see you?” She clears her throat and he seems to hear her sob again.

“I’ll come to you. I’ll be there in four hours, maybe five. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Wait for me.”

She laughs a little, and it loosens up his chest a bit. “Okay. You’ve been waiting for five years. Five hours sounds doable.”

“I love you.” He wrote it on two thousand cards, but he needs to say it. He isn’t sure how, but he hears her smile.

“See you soon.”

* * *

Elena eats the soup Karen has brought, her hand holding the spoon trembling only a little. The most odd thoughts come to her mind: how her nails don’t seem to have grown at all, unless Damon compelled her a manicurist every few weeks, how some of her muscles are still tender after their little hayloft adventure from five years ago. She giggles nervously when her thoughts wander in that direction. God, how did Damon even cope…

Way to focus on the big picture, Elena, she chastises herself. She has so, so many things to worry about.

She has several hours to waste. She calls Jeremy and they talk more than she can ever remember speaking with him on the phone before. She asks about art school – something in his life she completely missed – and his job in Greeley, and they talk about Bonnie, and she lets herself cry, knowing Jeremy won’t judge.

She calls Caroline, who is a sobbing mess, and Stefan is with her, too. “Good to have you back, Elena,” he says, taking the phone from Caroline. “He almost lost it.”

“When he died, I actually lost it,” she replies with a bitter laugh. “He’s a lot stronger than I am. How have you been?”

“We have all missed you,” says Stefan evasively. “But Damon had it worst. He didn’t go on a killing spree or anything,” - a chuckle which Elena feels is somewhat unwarranted, - “but I don’t think I’d ever seen him in so much pain.”

Each word resonates with a sharp twist in her heart. Stop it, she screams mentally, I can’t hear it. I never wanted to hurt him. I won’t let him get hurt ever again.

She blinks back the tears and takes a deep breath. “We’ll make it right,” she says, just to say something, but has to say goodbye soon because Ric is calling.

She feels awkward and doesn’t know what to say – the last time she saw him was when Kai brutally murdered his pregnant wife-to-be, and she doesn’t know what to ask that wouldn’t hurt him all over again. So he says “I’m glad you’re back,” and she says “We’ll see each other soon, right?” and they don’t have almost anything else to say.

She draws a bath because even though she realizes her body wasn’t really functioning this whole time, she feels gross. She absorbs the sensation of water against her skin, the scent of soap, the warmth and comfort. She goes about every move slowly, carefully, almost afraid that if she does something wrong, she’ll fall asleep again. She studies the color and texture of the tiles, runs her fingers along miniscule cracks in them just to feel they are real. “Breathe, Elena,” she reminds herself quietly when fear threatens to overwhelm her.

She knows nothing will feel real until she sees Damon again.

The closet doesn’t have a lot of clothes, but there’s her underwear in one of the drawers, and she finds her favorite comfy jeans and one of her favorite tops, white with a black pattern. _He thought of everything_ , Elena thinks affectionately. She finds a comb in the bathroom and, after a long struggle, actually manages to untangle the knots in her hair. Wandering into the hallway gets her a hairdryer from Karen, so she can give her hair some semblance of a style.

That still gives her a couple of hours before Damon can get here, so she switches on the TV. She realizes she must have missed a lot of stuff. What is going on with the world? Are there wars? Who is the president?

She stops at CNN, but she can’t seem to focus. Her thoughts just keep going back to Damon. She almost feels guilty, having been so completely out of it for five years, having barely felt their time apart, while Damon was aware of every single day of it, fighting for them both, loving for them both, while there were still so many things she failed to tell him, so many truths he deserved to know.

She didn’t lie to Stefan. She’ll make it right this time.

* * *

The damn plane is fucking slow.

Okay, that’s not true. He’s had a charter ready 24/7 in case, well, if something like this happened. He’s flying at 700 mph, faster than a Boeing 747, and there are no other passengers or luggage restrictions holding him back. He vampire-ran to the Richmond International Airport, he took off as soon as the plane was ready, which was almost immediately, and he’s going to get to Dallas faster than anybody has ever traveled from Virginia to Texas.

But it’s still not fast enough.

Thank God, Elena’s mind probably wasn’t consciously aware of how long she slept. He tried reaching out to her several times after their last kiss, to no avail. But he can’t help fearing that she was actually there this whole time, struggling through her subconscious, and he wasn’t with her.

If that’s the case, he’ll never forgive himself.

It’s absolutely pointless, but Damon keeps going back to the hotel arrangements, probably because he’s too restless and needs to think about _something_. Did he remember to bring everything? Does she have enough clothes? Did he save Jeremy’s number on her phone? Of course, he compelled Karen to do whatever Elena needed to feel comfortable, but that doesn’t mean he’s not worried.

It takes him three hours and twenty-two minutes to get to Elena’s hotel, and he slows down. Standing before the front door, he braces himself against the weird, painful tightening in his chest. He hasn’t seen her eyes, her smile, for five years. You have to be ready for everything, he reminds himself. You have to be whatever she needs you to be right now.

Even though there’s this small, selfish part of him that insists she’ll see him and run to him and kiss him, and his world will finally be whole again. He walks up the stairs with that image seared into his mind.

He says hi to Karen, asking her not to disturb them unless there is an emergency, and opens the door to Elena’s room.

“Karen?” she asks when he closes the door, and he realizes she didn’t expect him here so soon.

She turns around and her eyes widen, lips parting as she stares at him like she’s witnessing a miracle. He finds himself equally speechless, taking her in, feeling those long, painful five years disappear into the past to never be remembered again.

“Elena,” he finally manages, though it’s no more than a whisper.

“Damon…”

And then she bursts into tears.

* * *

She knows it’s impossible, but he looks older.

For a moment, she wants to check if he’s still a vampire. It’s like all the years he’s been skipping are trying to catch up with him, not quite succeeding, not quite failing.

Then tears cloud her vision and he’s next to her in a split second, his arms are around her, then his hands are on her face, thumbs wiping her cheeks. She struggles to calm down, covering his hand with her own, holding it to her cheek, kissing his palm. And then she’s surrounded by his scent and his touch, and she smiles so happily it makes her cheeks hurt, and Damon answers with a smile of his own, those years lifting like a mask he’s been wearing. She runs her fingers along his cheekbones, the stubble tickling her skin, and presses her lips to his once, twice, her kisses short and frantic until he stops her with a long, slow kiss that makes her toes curl even as her eyes suddenly fill with tears again.

Elena doesn’t know what to say, but it’s not like they need to say anything. The way he’s caressing her hair, the way he’s holding her hand, touching each finger like she’s something precious, says more than a thousand words. She saw his eyes what feels like a couple of hours ago, but now there are new wrinkles around them that she doesn’t remember, and she wonders if vampires can still age from grief. She leans forward and kisses his temple, her free hand playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“God, I missed you so much,” he says suddenly, planting an urgent kiss on her lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk about that, I didn’t want you to worry about me, and you had it so much worse, and it was my fault in the first place, but damn it, Elena-” another kiss. “I can’t stand the idea of ever losing you again.”

“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere,” she promises against his lips. They sink to the floor together, Elena straddling his thighs. She wants to do so many things at once. She wants to lean on him, hiding her face in the crook of his neck. She wants his mouth on hers. She wants to never stop looking at him. She wants to take him to bed and kiss all the pain away. Damon keeps staring at her, wide-eyed, and it breaks her heart a little.

“How are you?” she whispers, taking his hand and kissing it.

“I-” He inhales shakily, grasping her hand and looking away. “I’m a terrible person.”

“Hey,” she cups his face and makes him look at her. “I thought you didn’t do the martyr thing.”

He grins at that, wrapping his arms around her waist, drawing her closer. “Ouch.” His voice turns serious, his face, too. “I saw Bonnie die today. She-” he hesitates, and Elena gets a distinct feeling there’s something he’s not telling her. “She didn’t deserve that,” he says finally. “And here I am, still mourning one of my best friends, but I’m so insanely happy… How can I be so happy? How is it fair?”

“It’s not.” She rushes to wipe a tear that escaped his eye. “Bonnie and I have been friends since forever. I’m going to miss her. I wish I could go and pay my respects. I wish I could say goodbye.” She feels tears on her face, too, and presses her face to his shoulder. “But you know what? We’ll just have to be two terrible people,” she whispers, knowing he can hear her anyway, then looks up at him. “Because I’m happy, too. Because five years ago, right before everything went to hell, you made me the happiest person in the world.”

“I did?” he echoes, hands skimming the contours of her body carefully, like she’s made of porcelain.

“Yes. We fought so hard for a mere chance to be happy. I’m not going to waste it.”

He smiles, though he still looks sad. “Good. Neither am I.”

“Come here,” she whispers, because she wants to fix whatever Kai broke in him the day he linked her life to Bonnie’s. Damon’s hands slide up her back, drawing her even closer, and his lips touch hers with a tenderness that makes her shiver. He starts pulling back, but she follows, her fingers working through the buttons of his shirt as she tries to reassure him that she’s finally here, with him, and she’s not letting him go, either.

His hands tremble, so she does all the undressing on her own, losing the top, then the jeans, tossing her bra and panties aside carelessly while he stares helplessly, eyes sparkling, churning with a thousand emotions she can’t even name. She doesn’t know that she “had it worse” – yes, she did miss these five years, but if the situations were reversed, she doesn’t know how she would survive not knowing when they’d reunite again. When he died-

The thought is so painful that she rushes to kiss him again to remind them both that they are together now. His chest is pressed against hers, and that, or the taste and feel of her in his mouth, seem to shake Damon out of his reverie. His clothes disappear so fast that Elena with her human reflexes actually can’t catch it, and then it’s only skin against skin, and they both gasp at the contact. _This is what I needed_ , Elena thinks. For a long while, they don’t move, content to just feel each other. Another first after these five years.

Elena is the first to break, and she pulls back, scrutinizing his face, tracing the new wrinkles, running her fingers over his lips while he sits still, unable to say a single word. Again, she is the one to close the distance between them, kissing him slowly, deliberately.

She hasn’t felt those five years at all, but she takes her time to relearn everything there’s to know about his body anyway. She lays him on his stomach and traces his spine with her lips, her tongue, pressing her whole body against his back. She asks him to turn around and kisses her way down his chest until her hands, lips and tongue work him into a frenzy. His body is wound so tightly that the power beneath his soft skin is almost intimidating, but he stops her in time, flipping them so she’s on the floor beneath him.

(When she was a vampire, too, she found out just how hard it was to stop. Damon turned out the embodiment of restraint in more ways than one.)

This is her second chance to see that how good she and Damon were together had nothing to do with heightened sensations and everything with the fact that it’s Damon. She does need a little more time than when she was a vampire, but Damon is nothing but attentive, kissing, licking, caressing every inch of her skin, and when he parts her legs, she _wants_ so much she’s quivering. He kisses up her inner thigh, scraping the other one with his nails lightly, and she cries out, because she’s so close and it’s not enough and she may die if she doesn’t come right now.

“No teasing,” she warns him, and his mouth is on her at once, the sensation making her whole body shudder. Damon reaches out and Elena grabs his hand, gripping it so hard she’s afraid to crush some bones. When she’s close, he lets go to trace a line from her breasts all the way down until his hand slips between her legs, a finger sliding inside her, then two, just as his mouth increases pressure. Elena can’t contain her moans now, her hands tangling in his hair, her legs shaking. Every nerve in her body is straining, wanting, demanding, and when she raises her head off the rug, the sight of him pleasuring her is what drives her over the edge. Her back arches as she lets out a scream of bliss so loud she’s fairly sure everyone in the hotel heard it.

“Now,” she whispers, still panting from the aftershocks. Damon sits up immediately, pulling her to him as close as possible, her legs wound around his hips, her breasts against his chest. 

“I missed everything about you,” he confesses, looking her in the eye. His eyes are brimming with so much love that Elena’s heart nearly bursts from it. She presses her forehead to his and aligns her hips to sink down on him. After this hell they’ve been through, this is just the last bit of reassurance they need. They are together. They are unbreakable. They are so beautifully alive.

Damon pulls back slightly and stares at her, transfixed, as if memorizing all of her. Elena can imagine what she looks like – hair disheveled, cheeks rosy, eyes sparkling, body still quivering slightly – because he looks exactly the same. Looking at this vampire, this man, and realizing they have the whole future ahead of them is exhilarating, and Elena wastes no more time, pressing her lips against his hungrily just as she rolls her hips. They find their rhythm easily, their hands moving, caressing, claiming every part of the other’s body they can reach. When Damon’s moves become more erratic, Elena pulls back to look into his eyes, enjoying the blissed-out look on his face. He reaches down, but she turns his hand away.

“Can’t,” she shakes her head; she’s still too sensitive. Clenching her legs even more tightly around him, she leans in and whispers in his ear: “I want to make you feel as good as you made me feel.” He groans at that, kissing her fiercely, moving faster, harder until he pulls back, groaning as he comes.

Elena pulls him closer to kiss him again, this time gently, before she lets him rest his cheek against her chest, feeling strangely protective. “I love you,” she whispers, realizing she hasn’t said it to his face yet, and she needs him to know. He lifts her hand to his lips, kissing it.

“I love you, too.”

They are quiet for a while, when something occurs to Elena, making her chuckle.

“I just realized something,” she says in her best serious voice, and Damon raises his head to look at her inquisitively. “The bed is two steps away, and we did it on the rug.”

They burst out laughing.

“You have no idea how dull life is without you,” says Damon, and Elena kisses him for that.

“Then it’s a good thing there won’t be any dull days in our future.” She winks, and Damon smirks his best up-to-something smirk.

“Speaking of our future. I have a surprise for you.”

* * *

Walking into the apartment is a little intimidating.

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the action. The apartment is hers. (Damon made her sign the papers as a surefire way to keep out other vampires. She invited him in right after that.) She has opened the door with her own key, and there’s nobody here to ask who she is or what she is doing.

Still, she can’t help being a little nervous.

“Now, this isn’t Tribeca,” said Damon back in Dallas, answering her quizzical look after he’d given her a key. “Tribeca is too noisy, sorry, but I did always have a soft spot for Portland. And Oregon Health & Science University is only a short ride away, so you can resume your classes next year. If you want.”

“This is your surprise? You got me an apartment?” She wasn’t sure how to explain what a monumental thing it was. After she’d burned down her house, there was nothing quite like it. Quite like home. Of course, there was the boarding house, and she loved it, but the place had too many memories that had nothing to do with her or Damon to legitimately feel like it belonged to her.

“I got _us_ an apartment,” Damon corrected, feigning deep offense, and she laughed and kissed, kissed, kissed him.

Elena quietly closes the front door and puts down her suitcase with the remnants of her stuff that had been at the hotel. Shrugging off her jacket, she studies the interior of the kitchen-slash-living room. It looks beautifully spacious, white walls and colorful things skittered around enhancing that look. The floor is polished wood, so new and seemingly untouched that Elena feels like getting special protective footwear. But the fluffy throw on the couch seems cozy and inviting, so Elena quickly takes off her shoes to test if it’s as comfy as she thinks.

Under the throw, she finds a note.

_“You can paint the walls if you want. Please, don’t make them orange._

_Your stuff is in the closet. Actually, I’m pretty sure your stuff is everywhere._

_Love you._

_D._

_P.S. If you feel like having fun, go to the bar downstairs. It’s ours.”_

“Oh my God,” she says out loud, though there’s no one to hear. He thought of everything. He remembered every word she’d said to him before Kai’s spell, every detail of her little indulgent fantasy about their human future that she didn’t believe they’d ever have. It’s not the grandeur of the gesture that renders her speechless, because she knows money has never been an issue for Damon. It’s the fact that he did exactly what she wanted, that he did all this just to make her happy.

This is the moment he chooses to call, so she gets up and runs to retrieve her phone from the jacket pocket.

“Enjoying yourself?”

Elena shivers, remembering that a lot of words should be prohibited from sounding the way he makes them sound with his voice. “Enjoy” being one of them.

“Immensely. Painting the walls orange.” She plops down on the couch again, throwing her feet on the back of it.

“Nah, you couldn’t have enough time to buy paint,” he says confidently, and Elena huffs, annoyed.

“One can’t scare you,” she grumbles , but Damon is unfazed.

“Oh, you scare me plenty,” he muses. God, if only she were there next to him. Her whole being reaches out to him.

“I love you,” she says just as a reminder, closing her eyes. On the other end of the line, Damon closes his, too, and she knows it’s _impossible_ to know it, but she does.

“Love you, too. Talk to you soon?” He keeps his tone light, but Elena knows him enough to hear urgency slip through. He needs to go.

“Sure. You know where to find me.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who knows where to find you. You scared?” She imagines him wiggling his eyebrows for added effect.

“No. Not even a little bit.” They share a laugh. “Bye.”

“Bye, ‘Lena.”

She gets up then and goes to the bedroom to rummage through the closet. Admittedly, she’s curious what clothes Damon kept and whether he bought anything new. Maybe lingerie, a dirty part of her brain prompts. Damon has the best taste in lingerie.

But when she walks in, her attention is immediately drawn to the bed – big, inviting, with dark blue sheets and bulky pillows. Atop the sheets sits a teddy bear, complete with a ribbon tied on its neck in an elaborate bow. And a card, of course. _I wonder how many cards he had to buy_ , thinks Elena affectionately. He must have wiped out an entire Hallmark store.

_“To keep you company while I’m away._

_D.”_

Well, she thinks, so this is what her life is going to be like.

She can’t wait.

* * *

The next day, their phone talk is longer. Damon has more time, but it’s still not long enough. It kills him not being there with Elena, not being able to make up for the lost time, not yet, but hearing her voice makes it a little easier. He pictures her on the bed – their bed – lying across it, of course, taking up all the space. Probably stalking her ex-classmates on Facebook, catching up. Maybe reading.

A few minutes after they hang up, a text arrives.

_I never really thanked you for Georgia. I needed it._

Confused, he’s about to call her back, but changes his mind, deciding to play along instead.

_Are you saying you want to take another road trip together? ;)_

He sends the text and waits forever for her reply. Human typing speed sucks, unfortunately.

_Maybe :) I just want to tell you some things I never got to say. One thing every day._

This may be a fun game, Damon thinks, smiling to himself.

“I like this idea of yours,” he tells her on the phone the next day. “Please tell me it will include dirty talk, though.”

“Ass,” she huffs, but ends up laughing. Then, unexpectedly, her voice turns serious. “I meant it. When we were saying goodbye, I realized how many things I never told you, how many things you may never have a chance to find out. I don’t want to lose that chance now.”

The second text arrives late in the evening.

_When you saved me from Elijah, and I was running down the stairs, it was you I wanted to hug._

This doesn’t change anything, really. It was a long time ago, and a lot of things have changed. But it warms him anyway to know that in that moment, the life-changing moment when he looked at her and, for the first time, he _knew_ that he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her, she wanted the comfort of his arms, even for a split second.

 _That was the moment I realized I loved you_ , he texts back.

 _I’ll tell you mine tomorrow ;)_ , she replies.

He starts looking forward to the texts almost as much as to their daily phone talks.

Sometimes it’s the big things, like the third text, where Elena keeps her promise.

_My 18th bday. You gave me back my necklace, and I understood how much it had to hurt you, but you did it to make me happy. I wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but I knew I loved you then._

And then, in a minute:

_Ric knows. When he compelled me to forget, that was the moment that did it._

(It releases a part of him he didn’t know he was holding back. She loved him back then. She loved him as a human. It wasn’t her transition or the sire bond or any of that crap that somehow changed things in his favor. It was just about him and her and who they were.)

Or the eighth text.

_I tried so hard to hate you after you snapped Jeremy’s neck, but I couldn’t. I hated myself for it, but I understood you._

(He still hates himself for doing it, though.)

Other texts are light-hearted and teasing, like the fourth text.

_Speaking of my 18th bday, do you know the kind of dreams that stunt you pulled gave me?_

(He’s pretty sure he knows. The same kind that he had because of her wandering eyes and ragged breathing.)

Or the eleventh.

_What were you thinking with your “way to a vampire’s heart” trick? That was the coldest shower I ever took in my life._

Some are short but almost kill him anyway.

_The first time I saw you, I wanted you. Both first times._

Or just:

_In Denver, I wouldn’t have stopped._

Once she even surprises him with a text that is not really about any memory in particular.

_Just bought this; always wanted to. What do you think?_

Attached is a selfie in which Elena is wearing lingerie so outrageous he barely stops himself from vampire-running all the way across the country to see it live. Instead, he texts back:

_I think I might break the headboard when I come see you._

Elena likes being unpredictable (maybe that’s him rubbing off on her), so the next one is painfully sweet.

_When I let you stay the night before Homecoming, waking up with you was the best part of the day._

And of course, there’s the twentieth.

_When I burned my house, my diary burned with it. I’m sorry. I would’ve given it to you. You would’ve read how I was falling in love with you._

* * *

Jeremy comes for a visit on the weekend at the end of April.

Elena barely recognizes him – he’s so grown up; he’s older than her now, technically. But he laughs and pulls her into a hug, and tears well up in her eyes. This is him, this is her brother, and her heart flutters. Her family is finally here.

“You look older,” she manages to say, pulling back, blinking back the tears.

“You look the same,” he says with a laugh. They walk upstairs to her apartment, Elena clutching Jer’s forearm. She’s afraid he’ll disappear, somehow. Or maybe she will.

“Wow,” he says, whistling, as they open the door. “Nice.”

“I know!” She’s actually happy she hasn’t made enough of a mess of the apartment to make it look worse. “I wake up in 2018, and suddenly I own an apartment and a bar.”

“You own a bar.” Jeremy raises his eyebrows but doesn’t seem to be actually surprised.

“Well, together with Damon, yeah. The one downstairs.” She laughs, putting the kettle on the stove to make tea; the day is quite cold. “It seems we have family business.”

Jeremy tilts his head at that.

“Is it actually going to be family business?” When Elena looks at him, confused, he continues: “Are you going to marry Damon?”

Elena smiles, anxious and hopeful at the same time. She vividly remembers that conversation, mere hours before Kai put a spell on her.

“Well, technically, he hasn’t asked me to marry him, but he did say he wanted to be my husband and father of my kids, so I guess that counts.”

That does shock Jeremy, judging by his face. “Kids. You’re gonna have kids with Damon. I’m gonna be the uncle of Damon’s kids.” He shakes his head and suddenly his eyes widen even more. “Shit. Damon’s going to be my brother-in-law.”

“You can judge later,” she grumbles, though she’s not really mad; nothing can ruin her mood right now, and Jeremy doesn’t look legitimately angry, either. “Tell me about your school.”

“Well, I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, but technically, I didn’t go to the art school until about a year later than I told you.”

“What? Where did you go, then?” Maybe something can ruin her mood, after all.

And then she finds out that her brother trained to become a vampire hunter. 

* * *

“What are you doing here, exactly?”

Ric may be his best friend, but he’s annoying as fuck. Damon downs the remains of his bourbon before pouring himself another tumbler. The choice of alcohol in this bar is pretty crappy, but it’ll have to do if he wants to go through the night without snapping Ric’s neck.

“Is that a trick question? Sitting. Drinking. Why?”

“No. Here, in Virginia. You went batshit crazy when your girlfriend was in coma, but now that she’s alive and fine and you could just go and live your life, you choose to stay here and fight against heretics?”

Damon takes a deep breath, trying to remember that Ric actually means well.

“Remind me again, how exactly is this your business?”

“It’s not,” Ric doesn’t argue, wisely. “But I’m looking out for you. For both of you. At the wedding-” He presses his lips together tightly, and Damon winces, remembering that on that day, Ric lost so much more than he did. “That was the happiest I have ever seen either of you.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think it doesn’t kill me to be away from her?” He grasps the glass so tightly he’s afraid it may break in his hand. “But I can’t risk it. I can’t risk _her_. I have to cut all ties with the supernatural world. Except for little brother and Blondie, if they behave,” he allows. “I can’t go until all heretics are gone.”

“What if it doesn’t happen for another year or two?”

“Dammit, Ric!” He slams his glass on the table, earning a few looks from people at the tables. “You know damn well I’ll do anything to make it happen as soon as possible. But bringing all this supernatural crap to our home? When we’re both human and can’t defend ourselves against anything? Not an option. I won’t let her down.”

“You’re never going to be defenseless, you know,” counters Ric. “You’re old, experienced. Don’t cite me on this, but you’re really smart.” Damon rolls his eyes at that, even though he finds it hilarious. “You will be able to take care of yourself even when you’re human. I do that.”

“Oh yeah, that’s why you got killed five times.”

“Two of those times were you getting pissed.”

“All the more reason to be wary,” says Damon, unfazed. He knows Ric forgave him long ago, even if knowing he contributed to the whole Ric-turning-and-almost-dying issue still makes him uneasy. “Do you have any idea how easy it would be to blackmail us? If anybody drinks Elena’s blood before I do, I’m not going to be able to turn human. If anybody drinks my blood after I turn, I’m dead. I know my unparalleled bravery can be confusing, but I don’t actually have a death wish. Not now.”

Not now that he and Elena actually have a chance to have a future together. Not now that they’ve gone through so much to be together and be happy.

Ric nods sympathetically, though he can’t hide his smirk. “Damon Salvatore, giving up fighting and killing. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Strangely, instead of anxiety and irritation, those words make him smile. He remembers exactly what he’s giving it up for. _I’d give it up in a second to be your husband, partner, father of your kids._

“Yeah,” he agrees, clinking his glass against Ric’s. “Me neither.”

* * *

The first time Damon visits her is a long, excruciating month after she moved in. Elena has single-handedly painted two walls of the living room light blue just out of boredom.

Other than Jeremy, nobody can come to see her, and that is only because he abandoned the whole vampire hunting business about a year ago and nobody should be tracking him. Ric, Stefan and Caroline are all wrapped up in destroying heretics, and all the precautions Damon has to take to actually come see her and not bring any evil creature to their untainted doorstep make it way too risky for anybody else to visit. Damon said they didn’t even know her new address, and it had to stay that way for now.

When he arrives, he opens the door with his key – no suitcase; probably because he has enough clothes in the apartment as it is. Elena _loves_ it. It makes the apartment feel _theirs_ even if she’s still living there alone. She runs to him so fast she nearly trips over her own shoes, and he catches her. They kiss and kiss and kiss some more, and Elena has no idea how she’s survived this month. _Scratch that, how did he survive those five years?_

“You okay here?” he asks, winking, as his hands trace the length of her arms. It’s like he can’t stop touching her. Elena knows how much it costs him to look cheerful and smile and do the eye-thing when he’s been missing her so much. She takes his hand and presses it to her cheek.

“Now I am.” It’s true, she realizes. It feels like a massive weight has been lifted off her chest. She gives him another quick kiss and leads him to the kitchen to pour him some whiskey. After the drink, he manages to look away from her and appraise their surroundings – the new color of the walls, some furniture in different places than when she first moved into the apartment.

“Nice,” he nods in approval, his smile beautiful and radiant and just like she remembers.

“Wait until you see the bedroom,” she winks, enjoying the suspicious look that comes over him when she says it.

“Hmm…” With that, he grabs Elena and carries her just there, putting her down only at the foot of the bed. She squeals in excitement, pure joy coursing through her. “Wait,” he says, frowning suddenly. “I don’t see anything different.” Interior-wise, he’s right, of course. Other than the fact that she’ll never manage to make the bed as perfectly as he does and some of her clothes are hanging on the back of one of the chairs, everything in the room is about the same as when she moved in.

“Well, now there’s me in here,” she says, raising her chin defiantly. She’s in there. And under the dress, she’s wearing _that_ lingerie set she texted him about.

Damon’s eyes darken when he catches her meaning.

Elena laughs when her back hits the sheets, and Damon catches the sound with his lips.

He has to leave tomorrow, early in the morning, but today, he’s hers, and that makes the thought a little more bearable.

* * *

During the next three months, he only visits her twice, and she misses him like crazy.

She’s not going to hold it against him, of course. But having no company other than her laptop, a ton of books and the barista downstairs, Elena feels like she’s going to go mad sooner rather than later. Damon’s calls often catch her doing something mundane, like peeling potatoes or dusting the furniture, and she loves it. Talking to him, she can almost pretend he’s there. Not really believe it, of course – she’s not a vampire anymore and drugs don’t seem to be a great idea either way.

Her only connection with the past is endless talks on the phone and Skype with Jeremy and Caroline. With Jeremy, they talk almost every day, but keep it short; he’s grown up very business-like. Elena doesn’t feel bad about it – he has his own friends, his own life, and it’s not like she has a ton of news to share here.

Caroline, on the other hand, chatters tirelessly in her typical Caroline fashion, and Elena couldn’t be more thankful. She learns that Caroline has graduated with a degree in fashion design and when the whole deal with the heretics is over, she and Stefan are planning to go to New York – take a shot at big city life.

“We went to New York last summer for a couple of weeks – it was amazing. I could totally fit in there. I just love that big city vibe, you know? Stefan is not a big fan, but he says he’ll make peace with it. I can just imagine an apartment somewhere not far from Central Park, going to the same coffee place every day.”

“Is that your fantasy or is that _Friends_?” asks Elena, amused, and Caroline laughs.

“Well, maybe I borrow ideas, but can’t you see me walking through New York streets, heels and all, ready to take over the world of fashion?”

“Sounds very you,” agrees Elena, a lump in her throat. She’s happy for Care, but all her accomplishments make Elena feel the loss of those five years more acutely.

It could’ve been more than five, she remembers, cursing herself for being so selfish.

She swallows around the lump, but tears escape anyway, and Caroline’s still-perfect hearing catches it immediately. “Are you crying? What’s wrong?”

“I miss Bonnie,” she sobs. She wishes she could talk to Bonnie. It’s so damn unfair that Bonnie had to die for her to live.

“I miss her, too,” says Care. “I always remind myself that she’s with her grandma now.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course. If her grandma found a way to save Bonnie and Damon when they were both going to die, I’m sure she can find her on the other side, or wherever it is witches go to.”

“I guess you are right.” Elena wipes her tears hastily and tries to smile. Smiling, she’s read, makes you feel better even if you feel low. “So,” she switches the subject. “How are the things with you and Stefan?”

Elena watches herself carefully for any signs of jealousy or resentment, but there are none. Stefan is her past. Yeah, they dated for a year, maybe a year and a half, depending on how you count it. But it was over seven years ago, and her feelings for him are nothing more than friendly appreciation. She’s actually really glad he and Caroline found each other.

“Oh, things are great. I get to make all the decisions and Stefan gets to agree with them.”

“Hey, that’s not true!” she hears another voice, distantly.

“Shut up, I’m on the phone. And you love me anyway,” says Caroline, completely unfazed.

Elena listens to Caroline, and talks to Stefan, and they are almost unbearably cute in their unique way.

But every time she hangs up, she’s alone in her apartment again. Then she texts Damon and goes to the bar.

* * *

It’s late August when she hears a key turning in the keyhole. She’s wary at first, because she talked to Damon last night and he never mentioned that he was going to come see her soon – something that’s starting to make her a little resentful, even though she refuses to admit it. _He’s doing it for you, for you both_ , she chides, but the selfish and suspicious part of her keeps speculating that maybe Damon is so used to the dangerous, exciting lifestyle that he doesn’t know how to settle down and just be.

She hides behind the door first, clutching a pencil, but once the door opens, she sighs in relief, smelling his cologne before she can even see him. She jumps out of her hide, arms going around his neck.

“You’re home.”

“God, Elena, did I scare you?” he asks worriedly, probably hearing her heart going wild.

“Don’t care.” The sound is muffled against his neck. “Come here.”

She kisses him fiercely but pulls back when she notices he’s only holding her to him with one hand.

“What-”

He smiles and opens the paper bag, revealing a square box inside.

“Cake,” he explains. “Happy birthday, baby.”

It’s not that Elena can’t believe he remembered, because Damon always remembers everything, but she can barely believe he took the seven-hour flight from Richmond to Portland just to make sure she has birthday cake. She kisses him again, a brief but sensual kiss that holds a promise of a whole lot more. He puts the cake on the kitchen table and comes back to kiss her once more.

“And you know what else?” he whispers against her lips, and Elena has to make conscious effort to make out the words when her body clearly just wants her to go on with the kissing.

“What?”

“I’m not leaving.”

Her half-closed eyes fly open and she pulls back, unsure she’s heard him right.

“You mean…”

“The heretics are all gone. I’m free. We’re free.”

This is the best birthday present she has ever had.

* * *

Damon is pretty sure he has fallen asleep and is living in some magical, nonexistent dream land.

One where he wakes up with Elena, falls asleep with Elena, cooks with her (and for her), they go shopping together, go to the movies, take long walks, do everything they never had a chance to do before. They go to San Francisco one weekend, because turns out Elena has never been there, and spend another at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, because neither of them has been there and the gothic library is amazing.

For a while, Damon is worried he’ll screw up. Or Elena will get bored. Her classes at Oregon Health & Science University don’t start until October, which leaves them in each other’s company nearly all the time. Of course, he can take over management of their bar any minute, but he’d rather spend these remaining weeks with Elena, and no matter how hard he searches, he can never find any clue, verbal or otherwise, that she’s tired of being with him.

That’s not to say they don’t fight, of course. It wouldn’t be them without the constant banter and half-hearted arguments. Damon is ready for that part, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Then, there are the times when they get hurt.

The next day after Damon moves in, they are taking a shower together.

“I have to drink your blood sometime soon,” he mentions matter-of-factly, and Elena freezes and withdraws.

“Already?”

He hates that it immediately causes anxiety to coil somewhere in his stomach.

“Why? Change your mind?”

“Do you always have to jump to conclusions? I just asked,” she huffs, stepping out of the shower.

“I distinctly remember that five years ago, this conversation ended with your ex-boyfriend trying to talk me out of turning. At your bidding, I might add.”

“I’m not having that conversation with you again. I asked your brother to help, because I didn’t want you to make any rash decisions.”

“Is it still a rash decision? It’s been five years. I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Neither have I. God, why do you have to be this way? I just want us to be reasonable about it.”

“You know what’s reasonable? Doing that whole turning thing as fast as possible instead of sitting and waiting for some other vampire to walk in and drink your blood first.”

“Oh yes, right now you’re the very definition of reasonable!” she raises her voice, seemingly oblivious to the point he was making.

“Well, I thought you knew me well enough to understand who I am.”

“And I thought you knew me well enough not to accuse me of things like that.”

She wraps a towel around herself and strolls out of the bathroom, furious energy coming off her in waves. When he switches off the water and dries off on his way to the bedroom, he finds her on the bed, looking at the book she’s reading so hard that Damon feels like she might burn a hole in the page.

“Will you make me sleep on the couch?” he attempts to joke, but Elena doesn’t even spare him a glance, and that wave of anxiety washes over him again. Was their fight big enough to make him lose her when they have barely had a day together?

Part of him argues that he wasn’t completely wrong. It was their third conversation on the subject, and the second time when she was wary about the idea. Thinking back to the other conversation, though, he can’t help but remember the happy tears in her eyes that he chose her over vampirism, the tenderness in her kiss and the passion in her embrace later that day.

_How did you feel about her becoming a vampire?_

He replays the conversation they’ve just had in his mind and realizes he flipped out about a single word. Very mature of you, Salvatore.

“Elena?”

She still won’t look at him.

He goes to the kitchen and makes cheesecake, because he doesn’t know what else to do to make her forgive him. All the while, there’s no sound from the bedroom, other than her heartbeat and breathing, slightly uneven.

He cuts her a generous slice, makes the kind of cappuccino she prefers and carries them to the bedroom, crouching next to the bed. From the looks of it, Elena hasn’t turned a single page.

“If you pour this on my head, it’ll be well deserved, but mostly a waste of good cappuccino.”

Elena looks at him for the first time tonight, eyes narrowed like she’s actually contemplating the idea. Then she shakes her head a little, takes the offering and puts the tray on the bedside table before leaning down to kiss his cheek.

Encouraged, Damon climbs over her to the other side of the bed and sits down, pulling her to his side.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his forehead pressed to her shoulder. She’s silent for what feels like eternity.

“You can’t just lash out every time you’re feeling insecure,” she says eventually. “This is never going to work if you keep doubting me and I have to reassure you all the time. That’s not how a relationship is supposed to work.”

Damon almost believes the damage he’s done is irrevocable, but then he feels her fingers combing through his hair, and it becomes a little easier to breathe.

He looks up at her, feeling like the biggest jerk on the planet, and from the way her eyes immediately turn sympathetic, it probably shows on his face. She pulls him closer to kiss the corner of his mouth

“Maybe I was wrong, too,” she says. “For never saying it out loud after you said it, but the last thing I wanted was to pressure you. This had to be your decision. On your terms.” He frowns a little, unsure what she’s talking about. “But, Damon, I do want all those things you said five years ago. It’s a little scary to say this, to really commit to this at twenty-one – well, maybe I’m twenty-six, I have no idea – but I do want to be with you. I do want us to get married and have children, one day. I told you once I could only see a future with you. That’s still true.”

Unable to hold back, he kisses her, all the fear and insecurity leaving him at once.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I do want that future. And I really hope I can make you happy.”

Elena smiles sincerely and reaches for her cheesecake and coffee.

“Don’t worry. There’s nobody who can do it better than you.”

* * *

Perhaps, fighting isn’t so bad when there’s makeup sex involved.

Even though Elena convinces Damon that he’s forgiven, he makes sure the night is about her. His lips are everywhere on her body, fingers coaxing shudders and screams from her. After the second mind-numbing orgasm, she takes a minute to recover, with Damon resting his head on her stomach, and then she orders him to turn over and simply sinks down on him. The way she breathes “I need you” almost does him in, and it doesn’t take him long at all to come, his hands gripping her hips as she bends to lie on top of him, covering his body with hers.

It feels like it takes him a year to be able to breathe again. When he comes to his senses, Elena has pulled away, but her head is still on his chest, her finger drawing abstract patterns on his skin. Holding her like this, he can almost believe those five years never happened.

But before everything, there’s something he wants to talk about. He’s not entirely sure it’s a good idea after their fight, but he knows Elena won’t judge him for being curious.

“What did it feel like, turning human?”

She looks up at him as she considers her answer.

“You have to remember that when I turned, it undid Ric’s compulsion,” she muses. “The memories were so many I couldn’t handle them. I passed out, I’m sure you can remember that.”

He smiles, but that’s not what he was wondering about.

“As for what you really want to know… Yes, it was strange not to have those vampire powers anymore. But at the same time, it felt good. It felt more… right, I guess. And as for the heightened emotions and sensations thing, maybe that just sticks. Sex definitely didn’t get worse.” They laugh and she kisses him briefly. “And I love you as much as before, maybe more. I just don’t have to consciously stop myself from acting on every emotion like I had to when I was a vampire. It might cure some of your impulse control issues, you know.”

He pulls her closer, so their lips are touching, but he doesn’t kiss her. “You know I can control myself very well when I need to,” he says and feels her shiver.

“I do.” She pulls closer to press her lips against his but pulls back immediately, laughing when Damon growls in frustration. She puts her hands on his cheeks, and Damon feels like that touch can cure any worries he might have. “Look, we don’t know for sure what’s going to happen,” says Elena. “You were a human for 25 years, and a vampire for over a century and a half. I guess it’s going to be hard. But I do know that I’m going to be there every step of the way. We’ll survive this.”

“We always survive,” he supplies before finally, finally kissing her.

* * *

They work out a compromise and pick the date. September 24 – a week before Elena’s classes start, so they both will have time to recover, and Damon can use this month before to adjust to being human, as much as he can. “No vampire speed, no compulsion.” Elena is merciless. “No super sight, super hearing, at least not on purpose. Well, unless there’s a critical situation, of course,” she relents.

Damon has to agree that it makes sense.

He needs this month to deal with paperwork anyway. “So weird that I’ll only have one birth certificate, one ID, one passport for the rest of my life,” he confesses, making Elena laugh. He has to pick his birth year (he chooses 1992, to be the same age as Elena; plus, he will be starting from twenty-five anyway, and twenty-six is not that different) and to make sure his credit cards and accounts are all changed accordingly. He makes sure everything is in order with Elena’s ownership of the apartment (and a few other real estate items around the world that she doesn’t know about yet) and asks Elena several times to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything. For some reason, she finds the whole bureaucratic nightmare really fun.

The weekend before the big day, Jeremy visits them.

He knows all about their plan, of course, and he decides now is the best time for jokes, given soon Damon won’t be as dangerous to him as before. He tells Elena to drink some alcohol so when Damon drinks her blood and turns, he’ll be tipsy and happier. He attempts to have a serious conversation with Damon (an endeavor somewhat undermined by his non-stop chuckling) about “his intentions.” He goes out on Saturday night and comes back with a big, heavy gift for Damon. The vampire unties the ribbon and tears the wrapping paper to reveal a box containing a set of dumbbells.

“You’ll have to actually work out to be strong, dude,” he says seriously, and Elena bursts out laughing. Damon tackles Jeremy to the floor, which only makes her laugh harder.

* * *

On Sunday evening, Damon offers to take Jeremy to the airport. While Elena would normally tag along, she lets them go without her. She can use some time to think.

Just in a few hours, Damon will give up his immortality to be with her. Being together with her, for him, is enough to leave everything else behind. She has to admit she’s scared.

Relationships don’t last; most of them don’t, at least. Of course, her parents are a good example of how love in a marriage can last for twenty years. But for this one good example, she can name a thousand bad ones. Caroline’s parents. Bonnie’s parents. Matt’s. Tyler’s.

What Damon is going to do is a commitment much bigger than the regular legal procedure everyone else goes through. But if a future with Matt seemed strange and a future with Stefan was uncertain, with Damon, she has no doubt this is what she wants, and she’s ready to do whatever it takes to make it work.

So they talked. Of course, they already knew what they wanted to have in their future, but it never hurt to discuss things, Elena insisted. During that wonderful summer they’d spent together, they had been pretty much locked up in the bedroom, not a care in the world – only a naïve belief that they had eternity and that love alone would always be enough to pull them through. So Elena felt they had to make sure they were on the same page about major things, now that they were about to face the reality of marriage and health insurance and grocery shopping and bills and maybe children.

Damon agreed to have the conversation but didn’t seem too worried. “You know I’m always on your page,” he said, pulling her into a kiss.

The next day after their fight over Damon turning, he came to the couch where she was reading and lay down, his head in her lap. Like it had been throughout the last two days, she shivered at how surreal it felt to just be with him, to ruffle his hair and caress his face like they were just two people madly in love with each other instead of a doppelganger and a vampire-about-to-turn-human. 

“I know you wanted to talk, but I think we can agree I suck big time at these conversations,” he said. “You go first.”

“I’ll go first, but I suck at these conversations, too,” she admitted, chuckling. Damon caught her hand and kissed it before tucking it under his chin, getting her to laugh again. “The wedding. Do you want a wedding? If yes, what kind?”

Damon took no time to think it over. “Whatever you want.”

“No, that’s not how this should work,” said Elena, frustrated. “I know you want me to be happy, but you’re not supposed to just do things my way.”

“I don’t think I can be justifiably accused of always doing things your way. In fact, I’m pretty sure I do the exact opposite of what you want me to do 90% of the time.” She laughed, finding that she couldn’t really argue with that. “But the wedding seems a pretty small thing to worry about on the grand scale, you know?”

“Not in the human world,” she argued. “Come on. Humor me.”

That seemed to get him thinking, finally. “I did think of marriage back when I was human. You know, before Katherine.” Elena felt herself almost trembling, like she always did when Damon opened up about his past, revealed a part of himself she didn’t know yet. “Like any gentleman from a wealthy family, I imagined I would one day marry an accomplished lady from a good family. I really, really hoped I would love her, that I would be a better husband than my father was to my mother. But I never thought about the wedding itself. Back then, there was a code of conduct. There were certain rules about inviting people, about arranging the whole thing, so you didn’t have much choice. Now that I have somebody I actually want to marry…” he looked her in the eye, freeing her hand to interlace his fingers with hers, “…I want to do just that. It doesn’t matter how it goes, honestly. If you want a big fancy wedding with Caroline as your wedding planner, go for it. If you want to, dunno, elope and get married in Vegas, I’m all for it.”

“I don’t know about Vegas,” she said and then couldn’t hold back laughter anymore, “but Caroline as a wedding planner sounds terrifying. She’ll probably ban sex like for several days before the wedding so we can ‘stay focused’ or something. Maybe several weeks.”

Damon’s fake horrified look made her laugh even harder.

“I’m good with just the two of us,” she said finally. “We can always celebrate with our friends later, but I like the idea of having that day completely to ourselves.”

He got up after that to give her a long, toe-curling kiss before resuming his position on the couch.

“What about kids?” he asked quietly. “Did you mean it when you said we should have two, or..?”

Elena mulled it over. She could easily imagine herself as a mom down the road, fussing around her babies (their babies), packing school lunches and helping with homework, but the details like when and how and how many, that was sort of vague in her mind.

“I’m not sure. Maybe one kid, and then if we do a good job, we can go on,” she joked, but Damon barely smiled at that, and that sent a chill down her spine.

“Can I tell you something I’m afraid of?” he almost whispered, staring at the ceiling. Elena felt frightened, too, but she nodded, playing with his hair as a way to comfort both of them. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a good father. I didn’t have a normal father, I’ve never been one, I’ve never been _around_ one. Having kids with you is something I never imagined in my most foolish dreams until recently, but is it fair to subject a child to a father like me? Murderers don’t make good fathers.”

“Look at me,” she asked, bending down to give him a kiss. “I’ve thought about it, too. I had a lot of time to think while you were there hunting heretics and ripping their hearts out or something. But this is going to be a new life for you. I’m not saying what you did doesn’t count anymore; it does. But you can choose to live it differently. You can choose not to let your past define who you are. Because do you know who you are?” He looked at her intently and Elena took it as encouragement. “You are the most loving person I have ever met. You have so much love to give that, if you want to, you are going to be an amazing father.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course. Damon, I killed, too. I wiped out an entire vampire bloodline. Does that make me a bad person in your eyes?”

He shook his head. “You know the answer to that.”

“Good. So you know mine.”

He smiled sincerely at that, reaching out to touch her face. “When are we planning to have them?”

Elena shrugged. “When we are both ready. Maybe in five years, maybe in ten. We’ll see, all right?” He nods, and she catches his hand, kissing it. “Which brings us to the next question. Birth control.”

Thinking back to that conversation, Elena feels her anxiety lighten a little. They’ve thought this through. They are ready. They know how they want to raise their kids (a lot of freedom but without forgetting discipline) and how they’re going to manage their free time (spend it together whenever they can and want to but remember they can and should meet with friends and family now and then, too). They even agree on the importance of communication (“You know how many great couples just fall apart because of a misunderstanding?).

Of course, things can still go wrong. They’ll get mad at each other. They’ll yell. They’ll fight. But they’ll be there for each other. They’ll say I love you every night before going to bed no matter how angry they are (her idea). They’ll sleep together (in whichever sense of the word suits them best) every Saturday no matter what happens during the day (his idea). 

“Hey,” Damon’s voice shakes her out of her reverie. She checks the phone to see it’s been over an hour since he left. He frowns, probably because she hasn’t moved the whole time he was away. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah.” She reaches out so he’ll come closer and kisses him. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

They’ve decided to do the whole thing in the most pleasant way possible. In bed, that is.

So when Elena gets up from the couch and the knot on her robe loosens, exposing black panties and nothing but skin all the way up from there, Damon catches her hands before she has a chance to tie it again and pulls her to him until their lips collide. She seems as eager as he is, her hands sliding under his shirt, setting his skin on fire as he deepens the kiss. She pulls back for a moment to take off his shirt and throw it aside, immediately rushing back to his lips. He flashes them to the bed then – Elena on her back, him lying between her legs. She pulls back and looks at him questioningly, probably about unnecessary use of his vampire speed.

“One last time,” he says before she pulls him closer again. 

He leaves her mouth almost reluctantly to kiss his way down her throat, one of his hands sliding from her knee up along the back of her thigh, the silken fabric of the robe making way for him. Elena writhes under his hands as he traces her hip before moving down to tickle her inner thighs. This is the moment he chooses to close his lips around her nipple, pinching it lightly with his teeth just the way he knows she likes it. The sound of her crying out in pleasure is probably his favorite, so he moves back to her lips for a moment to catch it.

When he moves his fingers a few inches upward to touch her where she wants him to, Elena almost loses it, shuddering beneath him. Her blood sings to him, and he remembers this is the last time he’s hearing it move through her veins. It’s a night of lasts, he thinks, but they have a lifetime of firsts ahead of them, and that’s a damn good tradeoff.

His mouth slides down to her other breast, his fingers moving her panties out of the way and slipping inside her as his thumb carefully circles her clit.

“Hey!” Elena seems to be going for indignant, but she mostly sounds breathless and needy. “I didn’t realize an orgasm was on the agenda.”

“Well, why not,” he rasps, nipping at her breast before kissing his way up her neck until he reaches her lips. She responds hungrily, her hips moving restlessly against his hand.

“You too, then,” she argues, pulling back, her hands going south, and then she unbuttons his now uncomfortable jeans and pushes him to lie down so she can get them off him along with his underwear. His vision almost flickers when she runs her nails along his shaft, her lips following, but he pulls her back up, reversing their positions so she’s beneath him again. He’s awfully nervous about turning, even if he won’t tell her, so his self-control may not be up to par.

Elena winds one leg around his waist, opening up to him, and when he’s finally inside her, it feels like home even as it makes his head spin. Her hands glide over his face, lips trembling, and he’s so overwhelmed by the love he sees in her eyes that it encourages him to relax and enjoy the moment. If the whole turning thing doesn’t work out, this is a damn good way to spend his last minutes.

He keeps looking into her eyes when he reaches down to tease her clit, going over it in rhythmic strokes and drinking in the blissful haze in her eyes. He captures her lips just in time to muffle her scream as she comes, and he allows himself to let go.

He buries his face in her neck and hears the blood rushing in her veins as she fruitlessly tries to come down from her high.

“Damon, I… Oh my God.” He’s sure her voice has never sounded so sexy. She straightens her legs, which somewhat curbs the temptation to say fuck it and just have sex with her again. Excellent plan, isn’t it?

“You ready?” he asks instead, kissing her.

“As long as you are.”

He brushes her hair away from her eyes affectionately. “Good.”

His lips brush against her throat, a barely-there touch at first, then a kiss. When he raises his head to look her in the eye, he allows his face to transform, vampire nature taking over for the last time. Elena reaches out to trace the veins around his eyes.

“I love you,” she says, her voice strong and her eyes fierce. “Remember that I loved this part of you, too.”

“I know,” he nods, and kisses her. _Please, don’t let this be our last kiss_. He’s determined to make it good for her – it’s going to be the only time they share blood as a vampire and a human. His fingers reach between her legs as he lowers his head and bites her, only the smallest necessary prick. He won’t be able to heal her later anymore.

Her blood tastes like summer and lust and love, but before long, he feels himself falling asleep. He tries to hold on to his consciousness first, but remembers this must be part of the process, so he lets go. The last thing he remembers before darkness takes over is his favorite sound in his ears.

* * *

“Damon?”

The sound is muffled and unclear, but the voice is unmistakable. His eyelids seem to weigh a pound each and he cannot open his eyes no matter how hard he tries. All he knows is that he feels safe and warm and doesn’t ever want to move.

He inhales deeply, as he always does to analyze the surroundings, but the only thing he can distinguish is Elena’s scent.

“Elena,” he rasps, feeling her hand slip from the pulse point of his right hand to interlace their fingers. Her other hand gently brushes his hair away from his face, tracing his lips and gently running over his eyelids. That does it, and he finally pries his eyes open, remembering what happened before he passed out.

He scrutinizes his hand, but it seems to look the same way it did. He touches his face, more relieved than he’ll ever admit to anybody when he finds his skin perfectly smooth like always.

“You’re still a stud, if that’s what you worry about,” Elena giggles behind him, and Damon realizes he’s lying between her thighs, his head resting on her stomach. They’re both naked, since, obviously, neither of them has moved since they had sex, so he turns a little and kisses up the valley between her breasts, her neck, her chin before reaching her lips. She kisses him back fiercely, cradling him with her whole body.

“Good to see your sex drive hasn’t gotten any worse,” she jokes before pulling him closer again, pressing her forehead to his. Shakily, she whispers: “I was so scared something would go wrong. I’ve been holding on to your wrist just to make sure you have the pulse. At first, it was faint and slow, you know, vampire slow, but then suddenly it started beating so fast I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

“But I did, didn’t I?” Everything around him is strange and not the way it’s supposed to be, but he brushes it off, choosing to trust Elena’s judgment. 

She nods, smiling. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…” He looks away for a moment, grinning when he remembers a moment just like this. Looking into her eyes, her happy face so close to his, he announces: “I feel like I want to kiss you.”

* * *

He sleeps ‘til noon on his first day as a human, and he’s still so tired he can barely manage to keep his eyes open.

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

He squints against the sunlight coming in through the window, marveling at the actual sensation of pleasant warmth that he hasn’t experienced in a century and a half. Then he manages to focus on Elena, who’s sitting next to him, her smile brightening her whole face. He suddenly remembers this is a big day, the first day of their new life together, and it’s kind of ridiculous he’s sleeping through it.

“Hey.” He smiles at her, too, and she reaches out to caress his face, to run her fingers through his hair. He’s never going to leave this bed as long as she keeps doing that. “What time is it?”

“Time to get up.” She nudges him playfully, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “C’mon. I’ll teach you how to be human.” She winks. He rolls his eyes but follows her into the bathroom anyway.

They stand side by side as they brush teeth, which has a surprisingly homey quality to it.

“I do believe this part of the morning routine is important,” he tells her after they’re through, and Elena looks at him suspiciously.

“Really? Why?”

Damon grins. “Because now, I can do this.”

He pulls her to him. It doesn’t work out at first, because he’s so used to needing just a fraction of his strength to move her. Come to think of it, it’s kind of thrilling that he can be more careless now, give in to the moment completely. When their chests collide, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her, making it slow and sweet and leaving her a little dazed.

“What’s the next part of my… education?” he whispers against her lips, fingers skimming her sides as he speaks.

“Well, humans usually take a shower.” She laughs before stealing another kiss. “But I don’t think you’re going to have any problem with that. You could live in a shower."

He hums thoughtfully, molding her body to his until she’s completely relaxed. "Shouldn’t we be eco-friendly, saving water, showering together and all?”

“Mm, maybe…” she trails off suggestively, and he loosens the knot on her bathrobe, pushing it off her shoulders until it slips to the floor. The next kiss is deeper, more demanding, and before he realizes what’s going on, Elena’s fingers hook in his underwear, pushing it down. His hands trace her whole body, from her breasts down to her bottom, as his lips drop to her neck (he briefly wonders if he’s going to have a neck fetish for the rest of his life or it’s just because it’s Elena and everything about her turns him on).

He steps out of his underwear, backing Elena into the shower when she suddenly freezes. “No, wait.”

That’s the last thing he wants to hear now (the last thing he expected to hear, to be honest), so he backs away immediately, frowning. Vampire sex is not that different from human sex, save for better stamina and blood play, how could he fuck this up already?

“Something wrong?” he asks anxiously, and Elena shakes her head, smiling. Her cheeks are flushed, but he can’t tell if she’s embarrassed or just turned on. Maybe it would be easier if he could hear the heartbeat. It’s fairly inconvenient not to be able to do that anymore.

“When I went shopping yesterday, I forgot to buy condoms.”

They both burst out laughing at that, because yeah, he never used one (well, once, experimentally), and she hasn’t needed one either since she was sixteen and broke up with Matt, which is funny but in a kind of don’t-go-there way. The mundane reality of it all is somehow all the more precious to them because it’s so new. Because it’s a small, silly reminder that they are going to get the future each of them once dreamed of.

“Don’t worry,” he says, tugging her hand until she follows him into the shower. “There are plenty of things we can still do.”

The sunlight dazzles him for a moment, reflected on the shiny surface of his ring.

“Oh, right. Almost forgot.”

The ring slips off his finger easily, and he carelessly tosses it on the bathroom cabinet. In his former life, the ring meant freedom, but now, it’s nothing more than a flashy gift from a treacherous lover, and he doesn’t want Katherine in any part of his new life.

Sometime soon, he will have a completely different ring.

* * *

The day is full of almost unfamiliar sensations.

Hunger, uncomfortable, yet so different from the burn of bloodlust. Need for air, real necessity, not a mere habit. Fatigue after the long, long walk they take. The warmth of sunlight on his skin on their way back from the store. Total exhaustion after sex.

At night, Elena is gentle like never before, acting like it’s their first time, or his first time, her light, uncertain moves driving him wild with frustration. He wants to make up for it, to rock her world, but she sees right through him and flips them over, straddling his thighs and pinning his wrists above his head.

“It’s not a competition,” she whispers, leaning over him and brushing his lips with hers. “Just relax. Feel.”

She has this way of making him forget everything in the world that isn’t her.

Next day, he wakes up with sore throat (probably because, when Elena told him to wear something a bit warmer, he dismissed her, saying he’ll be fine) and his legs ache in some weird way and he feels tired even though he slept seven hours.

Elena is there, and she’s loving and caring and absolutely _perfect_. She brings him coffee and breakfast, and fusses around him, and it brings on vague anxiety that he can’t quite place. Maybe, he realizes, it’s because it can’t last. It won’t be like this every day. In less than a week, Elena will go back to college and he’ll be left alone with his humanity.

And yeah. They had a deal. Communication above all, etc. But Damon knows he will never admit just how weird everything feels these first days after he turned.

He did say he missed being human once, but speaking about humanity, he never meant it in the literal sense of the word. For him, humanity was rather a distant memory about a time when he was more-less happy, when he still had simple dreams and nobody could stand between him and his brother. He wasn’t talking about back pain, common cold and bad hangovers.

It’s baffling, inconvenient and just so damn stupid not to be able to flash to the other side of the apartment to catch Elena off guard with a kiss. Not to be able to listen in on a random conversation in the street just because he can. Not to have power over any random person, like he’s just another random person himself. Not to be able to move the entire bed if he wants to (freaking Jeremy was on to something with those stupid dumbbells).

Also, speaking of beds, it takes him way too long to recover before round two. Or three. Sometimes, he’s actually too exhausted for round three. The injustice of this drives him mad.

The only thing that drives him even more mad is that he’s 179 years old and yet a newborn vampire could overpower him in a second. In fact, a few random humans put together could overpower him. He used to be at the very top of the food chain, and now he can’t protect Elena anymore. It’s embarrassing at the very least and infuriating if he’s being honest.

In fact, Damon permanently finds himself so pissed off at _everything_ that if he were still a vampire, heads would be rolling. The world is shielding itself from him, taking away subtle colors and quiet sounds, hiding nuances of Elena’s breathing and the comforting sound of her heartbeat that always reassured him that she was alive. Sometimes, he worries it won’t ever end, but Elena seems to have developed this freaky ability to see right through him, better than when they were both vampires, and proves very successful in distracting him from all the doom and gloom.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

It’s the end of his third day as a human, he’s got a nasty bruise and a sore back after overdoing his first workout, but Elena’s presence (her happy, loving, towel-clad presence) still puts him at ease. She plops down next to him on the bed, immediately reaching out to pet his hair.

“Penny? My thoughts are worth a lot more than that. Wait until you hear the number of sexual favors I request per one thought.”

She laughs and nips at his shoulder playfully before moving on to plant kisses on his back, her lips soothing all the pain.

“Please?” she purrs, his every muscle relaxing under her touch. He lets himself enjoy it for another minute before turning around and capturing her lips for a long, sweet moment.

“I’m not okay… yet,” he admits, hating that her eyes become wide and scared as soon as the words leave his lips. He wonders if this was how he used to look every time he was worried she’d go back to Stefan. If she hated that look in his eyes as much as he does, now. “But I’m getting there. I promise.”

The worry in her eyes subsides a little. “Good.”

“You wanna watch a movie?” He draws her closer, and she follows happily, curling into his side.

“Sure.”

He reaches over to get the laptop, and Elena pulls back a bit, kissing his shoulder affectionately. “I’m gonna make it worthwhile. Trust me.”

Of course, he does.

* * *

Being together doesn’t come to them easily, by any means. After all, vampire or human, they’re both impatient, stubborn and can be really cruel in the heat of the moment.

When Elena goes to college and Damon starts managing their bar, they are all too aware of the frightening picture Stefan painted in Damon’s head when he was trying to talk him out of turning, and which Elena finally pried from him at one point during their Serious Talk About the Future. They aren’t going to allow inattention or bad habits ruin something they’ve fought so hard for, they decide. Elena comes home from college as soon as she can so they can spend time together, and Damon virtually quits drinking, not too delighted at the prospect of either Elena’s deadly glare and/or liver failure.

Perhaps, this idyllic life gives them a sense of security too early, Elena thinks. It’s so perfect, and she’s so blissfully happy with him, and he seems just as happy with her, that they forget things can go wrong at all. But they are such an all-or-nothing couple that when it’s good, it’s incredible, but when it’s bad, it can get really ugly.

Just a month after Elena started college, there’s the week when she goes out with her new friends almost every day after classes, and Damon starts sulking, because he hoped they would spend their few spare hours together. Of course, she deserves and needs to have a part of her life that has nothing to do with him, and she knows he understands that, but the irrational passive-aggressive treatment he gives her when she comes home late on Friday immediately makes her defensive, and they end up yelling at each other for half an hour.

“They are my friends, Damon! I never imagined you would get mad because I like going out and having fun!”

“And I never imagined that you would be so bored with our relationship that you’d have to look for fun elsewhere!”

Elena’s nails dig into her palms, because if she doesn’t feel the pain, she’ll start crying. She’s not sure what he’s trying to say, and she wishes she were anywhere else but with him in this room right now. She doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to look at him right now.

But Damon notices her whitened knuckles, and the next moment, it’s like somebody switched off the hurt and aggression.

“God, what are we even fighting about?” he says, as if to himself, shaking his head.

“About the fact that you seem to think I’m not allowed to have any social life that doesn’t involve you,” she says defiantly. She’s still hurt, because she honestly never expected Damon to get mad at her about something so mundane. She’s used to them fighting over saving her life, over unnecessary murders and how each of them changes or doesn’t change the other. Is that what’s going to happen now? Are they going to fight over small, stupid things?

Damon comes closer, arms going around her, and she wants to resist, but she can’t. She loves him even when he’s an unbelievable idiot.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, kissing the top of her head. “I was being a jerk.”

“You were,” she agrees, her voice muffled against his chest.

“Big jerk.”

“Mmhm.”

“I just miss you when you’re away. I know it doesn’t mean I have the right to demand you to be here every second of your free time, but there were times when I was _notorious_ for acting rash, so there’s that.” He sighs heavily, and Elena pulls back to look at him.

“Damon, it’s not going to be a healthy relationship if we are just the two of us, isolated from everyone and everything else. We are supposed to have hobbies, friends, parts of life, however small, that don’t involve the other. What about reading? What about the piano? You were going to order one for the bar God knows how long ago.”

“I know, I know. You’re right.” His hands trace the contours of her body as if absently, only Elena knows him better than that. It’s all part of his nefarious plan to earn her forgiveness, and damn him, it’s working.

“Course I am.”

“Will you forgive me?” There it is, the hopeful voice. He freaking _knows_ she can’t stay mad at him for too long, because whenever she tried to in the past, it never really worked out.

“Only because I love you,” she says, raising her head to give him a brief kiss. “And because you promise not to get mad about stupid things like that in the future.”

He kisses her, too. “Promise.”

“And I’ll introduce you to my friends, too. I’m sure you’ll like at least some of them.” When Damon raises his eyebrows distrustfully, she laughs, nudging him lightly. “Or you’ll _try_ to. Your misanthropic tendencies can take a break every now and then. I told them about you, and they are half in love with you already.”

“Hmm, you must have exaggerated a great deal.”

She shakes her head, grinning happily. “Not a thing.”

Then, there’s the rainy November day when Damon is tending the bar, and Elena comes home early to see him flirting with another woman. And while the rational, mature part of her is aware that he has to be friendly with his customers, the possessive, short-tempered side notices (imagines?) all the telltale signs of attraction – the easy, suggestive smile, the glint in his eyes, the way he’s leaning ever so slightly over the bar. With the possessive side firmly in control, Elena glares at Damon, stomps upstairs and, once he follows her, which is almost instantly, makes a scene that would put most dramatic actors to shame.

Damon is the very opposite of how she feels – calm, cool, collected, his voice frighteningly even. “I was doing my job, Elena. We weren’t kissing or holding hands or anything. We were _talking_.”

“Is that how you ‘talk’ to all women who come to your bar?”

“Why are we yelling about this, exactly? I didn’t do anything wrong, and I think everyfuckingone we have ever met can tell within about five seconds how I feel about you, and you know it, too.”

“Wouldn’t hurt you to show it, then!”

“I don’t show it? I think I have been doing – have done – enough to prove that I love you.”

“Sure, now throw the fact that you turned human for me in my face. You were the one who made that choice, Damon, not me.”

Elena regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth, but Damon looks at her without a single word, the hurt in his eyes even more palpable than after that stupid fight at the Originals’ ball.

He leaves before she has a chance to stop him, though. She sinks to the floor and cries.

He comes home an hour later. She rushes to the door as soon as it opens, nearly knocking him off his feet when she grabs him and kisses his cheeks, jaw, lips, her hands gripping the front of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers against his unresponsive lips. “I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it.”

He sighs heavily. “I guess you didn’t.” This time, when she kisses him, he kisses her back, and she feels like a weight has been lifted off her chest. “I’m sorry, too. That I left,” he specifies. “God, Elena, I hate it when we fight. Every time we do, I get this stupid anxiety that this is it, that we won’t get through this, which is completely irrational, but there it is. And I’m just so afraid that whatever next thing I might say will be it, will be the one when you say you can’t do this and leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promises. “In case you didn’t know, you make me very, very happy.” She kisses him again. “I’m sorry about earlier. I had a shitty day in college, and I had this idea that I would come home, and we’d draw a bath and make love, and when I saw you in the bar, I just flipped out and used it as a reason to fight. Maybe turning human didn’t cure my impulse control issues.”

Damon smiles and kisses her temple. “Come on. We can totally draw that bath, and I’ll show you that impulse control is _extremely_ overrated.”

* * *

In December, Elena comes home on a Thursday and skips into the living room, giving Damon an enthusiastic kiss before she plops down on the couch next to him.

“Hey you. What’s with the excitement?” he asks, reaching out to pet her cheek, because she’s way too adorable when she’s happy like that.

“It’s less than two weeks until Christmas. Our first official Christmas together.”

“Mmhm.” He shifts a little so Elena can settle more comfortably against him.

“We have a ton of stuff to do, you know.”

“Like buy a tree?”

“Not just that. We have to decorate the whole place. So, we need to buy decorations first. I want a ton of lights. I think lights are my favorite thing about Christmas. There’s something so festive about them.”

“Lights. Got it.”

Elena raises an eyebrow, clearly displeased with his short answer.

“What is your favorite thing about Christmas?”

“If we buy you one of those lacy red robes with a fluffy hem in that lingerie store, that may very well become my favorite thing about Christmas.”

She nudges him playfully. “Jerk.”

“Mmhm.” He knows she doesn’t mind the jokes, though, so he simply presses her closer to his side, kissing her cheek.

“And we need to think of the menu and where everyone is going to sleep-”

Huh? Damon frowns, because his memory is not what it used to be in his vampire days, but they certainly never discussed some kind of a party going on in their house on Christmas.

“Everyone who?”

She pulls back, looking at him like he can’t understand something obvious. “Jeremy, Caroline, Ric and Stefan.”

“Whoa, wait. You want to invite Stefan? And Caroline?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

She can’t be serious.

Of course, he would love to invite Stefan. He could live without Blondie, but she’s a decent sidekick, so he would be glad(ish) to see her, too. But after all the effort he’s put into making their home safe and free from anything supernatural, he’s not going to blow it on a whim. Even if it’s Elena’s whim.

“Elena, remember how I had to take a _secret charter_ to Portland to visit you?”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that I’m not going to bring vampires to our doorstep.”

“It’s your brother and my best friend.” She speaks in this way Damon hates, her voice hard, eyes accusatory.

“I know that. But I want you to understand that we can’t afford that risk. Jeremy, okay. Ric, maybe. I think he’s been away from Mystic Falls for the past couple of months, enough to go under the radar, if we plan it right. But Caroline and Stefan are vampires. They are going to run into other vampires. What are the chances that a random vampire who wants to turn human is going to be noble enough to let us live – to let me live – if he or she finds out where we are?”

“If you were capable of secretly flying to Dallas and Portland while still dealing with a bunch of heretics, then so can they.”

“Why do they _have_ to be here? You talk to them on Skype like every other day.”

“Because they’re family, and family has to be together on Christmas.”

Damon sighs heavily. “Look, I know how important family is to you, and I’m sure you miss them, but how don’t you see it’s not worth the risk? Are you really ready to throw all of this away?”

He’s just trying to make a point, but Elena seems to take it the wrong way.

“Are you saying that just because I want to spend Christmas with people we both love, I don’t care enough about you?”

“No, I’m saying, that for our sake, for the sake of our safety, we need to-”

“What? Not meet with them, ever? Are we going to sit here locked up, just the two of us, our whole life?” It is the indignation in her voice that burns him like vervain used to, because while he loves Stefan and Ric and Jeremy and wishes they could all get together as often as they like, that’s not the reality they have to deal with.

“We can meet with them, but not very often. And certainly not in our own home. And it would take a lot more planning than buying a tree and hanging decorations. I am a 179-year-old person whose blood now contains the only existing cure for vampirism. Excuse me if I want to be careful, but those are the rules. That’s our life. I thought you accepted that.”

“Maybe I didn’t.”

There’s an emptiness between his ribs and a painful squeeze in his chest. “Well, you don’t have to stay away from everyone for my sake.” He _knows_ it’s a bad idea to say it, but he can’t stop the words from coming out. “It’s only my life on the line here. You are free to do what you want.”

Elena looks at him for a long moment, not saying a word. Then she goes to the bedroom and closes the door behind her. He can hear her switching on a movie.

He leaves the pizza he ordered earlier on the counter and goes to the shower. He stays there for a long time, and when he’s out, the pizza is gone, but the bedroom door is closed again.

He puts on a bathrobe and stays in the living room for another hour, reading, until Elena emerges from the room and goes to the shower, not even looking at him. After a while, she goes back to the bedroom. The door stays open a crack, so when Damon is fairly sure she had enough time to get decent, he follows her.

The room is dark, and he sees nothing more than Elena’s faint outline on the bed. He silently curses his weak human eyes and ears, wishing he could see her face and hear her heartbeat. They would tell him everything he needs to know.

Elena makes no move to stop him when Damon climbs on his half of the bed and gets under the blanket. He doesn’t pull her closer, like he usually does, because he’s not sure she wants him to. Maybe they’ll sleep it off and it’ll get better in the morning.

“I love you,” he tells her quietly, because they came up with this tradition exactly for days like this.

She lets out a heavy sigh. “I love you, too,” she says, touching his hand so briefly he might be imagining it, and turns away from him, curling up on her side.

Sleep doesn’t come to him for a long time.

* * *

He wishes he could tell her he’s sorry. Wishes he could just apologize and make it better.

But he can’t, because that’s simply not true. He’s not sorry that he’s looking out for both of them. He’s not sorry that after all they went through to be together, he wants to take some extra measures of precaution.

And even if he did tell her this lie, Elena probably wouldn’t listen, because she’s actively avoiding him. In the morning, the bed is empty, and he is only awake enough to hear her leaving an hour earlier than she’s actually supposed to.

He goes to the bar and snaps at people to the point when a waiter timidly suggests that maybe it would be best for him to stay home and relax a little, since he seems “rather tired.” He chooses to go for a drive instead, going mindlessly through the city as fast as the speed limit allows. It doesn’t help, but it does get his mind busy for a while. Gone are the times when he could barely pay any attention while driving, reflexes doing the job for him.

When he comes home, Elena is already there. She looks up from the couch, but doesn’t say a word, focusing on her laptop. He hates to admit it, but the silent treatment is starting to get to him. It takes everything he has not to flip out, not to taunt her and tell her something cruel, like he would’ve surely done before, just to get some kind of reaction from her. Instead, he’s silent, too, and makes a point of staying in the bedroom throughout the evening.

They go to bed early, facing away from each other, the mandatory “I love you” quick and quiet.

Elena still texts him, though. When he’s about to fall asleep, his phone chimes, alerting him of a new text message from her. It’s just a sad emoji, but he smiles at it all the same.

Saturday is dragging slowly and miserably. They aren’t on speaking terms, but he stubbornly doesn’t want to leave the apartment, and Elena doesn’t seem to want to, either. They are like two strangers locked up together, and the silence weighs down on Damon, making him feel each of his 179 years in his 25-year-old body. 

A few times, he catches Elena looking at him, but she looks away at once, her mouth in a hard line. He doesn’t know what to do about it. They are going to make up, right? They still love each other, and they are still here, even if it hurts. And maybe the insinuation that their life together wasn’t worth giving up seeing Stefan and Caroline still twists a proverbial knife in his gut, but he’s not nearly ready to give up on them.

He just has exactly zero experience with these kinds of situations. And he really sucks at serious talks.

In the evening, he comes to the bedroom to find Elena reading in bed. It _hurts_ to look at her, and he doesn’t know if he can take any more of this tension between them, so he averts his gaze and grabs the pillow.

“I’m gonna crash on the couch,” he says. The silent treatment isn’t on his part, after all. Elena looks at him and takes a deep, shaky breath.

“Don’t.”

He looks at her for a long moment, not saying a word. Waiting.

“It’s Saturday,” she says, a ghost of a smile on her lips.

He tiredly puts his pillow on the bed again and lies down. This is the first time she’s spoken to him for several days, save for the “I love you,” and he’s been missing her voice like crazy.

“Right. Saturday,” he says, answering with a slight smile of his own. Elena reaches behind her to switch off the stand lamp and settles comfortably on her side, facing him this time. He mirrors her position, looking at her silhouette in the faint light from the street.

Little by little, she squirms closer, so close he can feel her breath on his face. She reaches out and runs her fingers through his hair, along his cheekbones, over his lips.

“I missed you,” she says softly.

“Missed you, too,” he admits easily. He touches her cheek, then smooths his hand down her arm, caresses her back. She breathes shakily, and then she’s drawing him closer, or maybe he’s drawing her closer, their lips meeting in a feverish kiss after two days apart.

“I love you,” she tells him between the kisses.

“Love you.” He pulls her on top of him, her weight soothing and exciting at the same time. Her legs go on either side of his hips like so many times before, and he captures her lips in a deep, languid kiss. “I’m still kind of mad at you, though.”

“I’m still kind of mad at you, too.” Another kiss. “Talk about it later?”

“Works for me.”

His hands slip under her nightgown, gliding over her bottom, up her back. She pulls back a little, raising her hands to help him slip the garment off of her, and then her soft body covers his again. She moans at the contact, rubbing her breasts against his chest as she nips at his bottom lip teasingly. Her kisses trail butterfly-light over his jaw, down his neck, leaving his skin ablaze. Her hands glide over his abs as she traces his pecs with her tongue, making him shiver. God help him, he wants her so much his whole body is almost shaking with it.

Elena looks up at him, grinning, clearly pleased with his reaction. “Hmm, you did miss me.”

“You bet I did.”

She shoves his underwear down his legs, her nails teasing the trail of hair from his navel down. Damon groans at the sensation, gritting his teeth, because it already feels too good, almost too much. He rolls them over, maybe being a bit too rough, but Elena is still grinning with her head on the pillow, hair fanned out around her. He wastes no time in kissing her, one of his hands caressing her breast, flattening against her nipple. She arches her back, crying out when he pinches her, her legs winding more tightly around him. He hurries to soothe her, running his lips down the column of her neck, over her collarbone before he rolls the hardened peak into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue. She never held back with him, so she doesn’t try now, groaning as she clutches his hair, holding him close. God, he did miss everything about her – the way her skin feels under his tongue, the way she responds to every move, the sounds she makes, never reserved or embarrassed around him.

Her moans reach an almost feverish pitch, her hips jerking reflexively as he teases her breasts. She pulls him up then and kisses him deeply. Her tongue knows some wicked, wicked things about his mouth, and when she pants “I need you” against his lips in what he believes is the most erotic voice he’s ever heard, it nearly undoes him. 

He reaches to the bedside table, fumbling for a condom. He puts it on in mere seconds, and then Elena is turning over, her hands firmly placed on the headboard, the graceful arch of her back right before him. He raises an eyebrow as she looks at him mischievously over her shoulder.

“Are you planning to just sit there and stare at my ass all night?”

He caresses said body part admiringly and presses a kiss to one of the cheeks. “Wouldn’t mind it, this is a great ass. I have a better plan, though.”

He grips her hips and enters her, slowly at first, then more forcefully, and some more, and she moans, clutching the headboard with all her might – not enough to chip it now, like it happened in that glorious summer of 2011. His free hand skims her side, grazes her breast, strokes her back. He instinctively listens to every change in sounds she’s making, every gasp, and when he feels she’s close enough, he slips his hand around her hips, between her legs, his every move pushing her against his fingers. She cries out, trapped between two sensations, and he presses his hand to her harder, unsure how long he’ll be able to hold back.

Elena loses her grip on the headboard, falling weakly on the pillow. She lets out a sound between a scream and a groan when she comes, and something primal in him recognizes the call, answers it. He follows soon, collapsing exhaustedly on the bed next to her.

He takes a moment to throw the condom into the trash, and when he comes back to bed, lying down, face into the pillow, he feels Elena shift closer until she ends up with her head and chest resting on his back.

“Am I squishing you?”

“Nope. Feels awesome. Don’t move.”

Elena giggles, pressing a kiss to his back. “Are you still mad at me?”

Damon raises his head a little, trying to twist it so he’ll see her, but her hair blocks all the view and he gives up on the idea. “Overall, yes. At this particular moment, though, it’s very hard to be mad at you.”

He feels her smile against his back. “I think we have a problem with staying mad at each other.”

“I’m not sure I would categorize this phenomenon as a problem.”

He rolls over carefully so he ends up on his back, Elena across his chest.

“Why were you mad at me?” he asks. “Because of Stefan and Caroline?”

She props her head on her hands to look at him. “No. I mean, during the fight, yeah, but it wasn’t why I stopped speaking with you – I’m sorry for that, by the way.”

“Apology accepted,” he says with a slight smile. It’s true, he realizes suddenly. As long as they can still be open with each other, the fight doesn’t matter. Not in the long run.

“I was mad because you implied that I cared about myself, about my feelings, about Stefan and Caroline, more than I care about you. Like I would even for a second choose any of that over you.” She pulls forward a bit, just enough to reach his lips, before she presses the gentlest kiss on them. “You know, I will always choose you.”

Damon almost melts at his own words given back to him, unused to this even after all this time. “I’m sorry, too. I’m not sorry for putting our safety first, but I am sorry for saying that. It was cruel of me.” 

She smiles. “It’s okay. I still love you.”

“I love you, too.” He pulls her into a hug, hiding his face against her neck. “So, Jer and Ric, is it?”

* * *

Jeremy and Alaric do visit on Christmas, poor Ric having to follow through with Damon’s completely paranoid plan how to avoid being followed. Seeing the four of them around their tiny kitchen table, Elena feels a little part of her that felt nostalgic for old times heal a bit. Maybe she can’t host a big Christmas party with all her friends, but the closest of her family is here, and that matters more than anything else.

They’ve splurged epically on Christmas decorations, though Elena insisted they needed to make the stockings to hang by the nonexistent fireplace by themselves and they spent the weekend before Christmas attempting to sew all four of them following a YouTube tutorial. They made two stockings each and then decorated them, armed with pretty threads, ribbons and glitter glue. Neither of them is a big expert at needlework, so the stockings haven’t turned out especially pretty, but Elena loves them anyway.

All those years ago, when they were saving each other’s life while fighting the scorching attraction, Elena would’ve never imagined that in 2018, they would be making Christmas stockings for their first holiday season together and bickering about decorations on chocolate cake.

She would’ve never imagined they would have to get up at 6 AM every weekday to go jogging together, and that after jogging and showering (more often together than not), Damon would always make her breakfast _and_ pack her lunch, because, he insists, she has a schedule to follow while he can come to the bar whenever he wants, so it’s only fair he should take care of her.

Or that their favorite thing to do would be to simply cuddle on the couch and make fun of a random B-movie.

(Well, one of their favorite things anyway.)

Or that they would travel at least once a month, because she’s never had the opportunity, and Damon wants to share his favorite places with her.

Or that on Christmas, Alaric would ask her in an endearing fatherly tone: “Honestly, are you happy with him?”, and she would answer without the slightest doubt.

“Yes. More than I thought possible.”

* * *

On New Year’s Eve, it’s just the two of them.

They made plans to stay in, eat a ton of cheese and candy and drink wine, and Damon went on and on in an exaggeratedly serious voice that New Year sex is very important. (Not that she minds, of course.) But there’s something mysterious about him throughout the day that makes Elena suspect he has some kind of secret agenda.

She exits the bedroom wearing a strapless red dress, the soft silk that trails down her body making her feel almost weightless. There’s something about gowns that makes her feel sexy and confident, and the way Damon’s eyes widen when he sees her for the first time is nothing but satisfying. He’s handsome like always, of course, in his usual black-and-some-more-black outfit. Just because he doesn’t get blood on his clothes quite as often now doesn’t mean he’s going to change his habits, he remarked once, staying faithful to his favorite black, midnight blue and gray.

The room is dim, the lights from the Christmas tree casting strange, colorful shadows around. There’s soft music coming from the loudspeakers, and Elena half-expects to see rose petals on the floor or something, except she told Damon once she didn’t like cheesy gestures, so of course, he would remember. Damon stands up from his spot on the couch and comes to stand closer, proffering her a glass of wine.

“Why’d you switch off the light?” she asks with a chuckle, taking a sip.

He rolls his eyes a little, like he always does when she asks something obvious. “It’s more romantic this way.” He pulls her closer with his free hand, pressing his lips to her shoulder.

“Mm, is it?” She kisses the underside of his jaw, shivering when his hand caresses her back through the silk.

“Seems to be working.”

She smiles and takes his glass, setting both of them on the coffee table.

“Do you want to dance?” she asks, and Damon beams in response, taking her hand to pull her to him again.

“Like you have to ask,” he whispers a mere inch from her lips. She moves her head to the side a little to avoid the kiss.

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” she reminds him. “We’re only supposed to kiss at midnight.”

“That’s almost half an hour away,” he complains.

“Well, there’s a chance for you to put your praised self-control to good use.”

He pulls back so she’ll see him pout, but quickly changes his mind, smiling. His hands travel all over her body, igniting her skin, and she actually has a hard time controlling herself now. His lips ghost over her cheeks and jawline, sometimes dropping to her neck, shoulders, cleavage, but every time she’s about to give in, he stops and continues dancing like nothing happened. Elena is so lost in this game, in him, that she stops keeping track of time until Damon announces it’s five minutes to midnight.

“Good,” she answers, her fingers tracing his lips. He chuckles at her impatience, his eyes the only thing giving away how impatient he is, too, but then he turns a little more serious.

“Look, I know I’m not the most enthusiastic person when it comes to the holiday season, but I’m glad we’re spending it together,” says Damon. Elena smiles uncertainly, unsure where he’s going with it.

“In fact,” he goes on, “it would make me really happy if we could spend all holiday seasons together.”

It takes her breath away a little when she realizes what he’s probably saying.

_Your husband. Partner. Father of your kids._

Elena hasn’t forgotten the breathtakingly passionate speech Damon made that day, a declaration of love and a proposal all wrapped up in one. They talked about the wedding before Damon turned, so there was always the assumption that they would get married. She just didn’t know when.

(Or where. Or how.)

Then, they started school and work, and developed a new happy routine, like any couple in love, but Damon hasn’t really brought it up – hadn’t until just a moment ago. And she hasn’t either. It doesn’t even matter that much. She doesn’t need a wedding to know that Damon loves her and is probably more committed to her than anyone has ever been committed to their partner, married or not.

No, she doesn’t need it. But part of her really, really wants it.

She forces herself to keep it cool and play along.

“That’s the plan,” she answers with a grin. “Spending all holiday seasons together sounds good.”

“How would you like it if, come 2019, you could introduce me to your friends as your fiancé Damon? Of course, that would mean that I get to call you my fiancée, too.”

Her smile grows wider. “Sounds intriguing.”

“And then – just hear me out – after we’ve had enough fun doing that, it would be really cool if before 2020 comes around, we could stop the whole engagement thing and have a wedding and just call each other husband and wife instead. How does that sound?”

Her smile falters a little, because despite the fact that he went for the lighthearted, matter-of-fact way to propose, his eyes are sincere and hopeful and God, she loves him too much to keep him waiting.

“Wonderful,” she says softly, almost whispers.

“Is that a yes?” asks Damon, and she smiles again at how breathless he sounds now.

“Of course that’s a yes.” 

Elena rushes to kiss him, but he stops her. “Still three minutes until midnight. Also, wait a sec, I’ve got the rings.”

“The rings?” she emphasizes the ending. 

“Well, I know it’s tradition that the girl gets an engagement ring, but I thought it was really unfair that you would be the only one having fun with showing it off the fact that you’re engaged. So I got one for me, too.”

Elena laughs out loud at that. He’s so wonderfully romantic, mostly in how he acts like he’s not romantic at all.

“Gimme,” she demands, wiggling her fingers, and he gets the box from the coffee table where he forethoughtfully covered it with a magazine before.

“Your hand, milady,” he asks, retrieving a delicate gold band from the box. He slips it on her ring finger, and Elena gasps a little, blinking a bit too fast. For the first time in her life, she not just understands, but actually _feels_ what the big deal is. It’s not a fairy tale that she might’ve laughed at when she was sixteen. This is reality.

Damon lifts her hand to his lips, kissing it.

“I love you,” he says. She smiles, a couple of tears escaping anyway.

“I love you, too.” She takes the other ring from the box, squinting when she notices an inscription around it. “ _When found please return to Elena Gilbert_?” She bursts out laughing. “Idiot.”

“You still love me.”

“Obviously.”

She puts the ring on his finger, too, smiling at their hands.

“Just to avoid any miscommunication,” she says, looking up at him, “I do want to marry you, Damon Salvatore. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, making fun of hipsters and eating eggplant parmesan and traveling the world and doing whatever the hell we want together. All right?”

“Perfect.” He looks at the clock. “That was a wonderful speech, but it’s like ten seconds to midnight. May I now kiss the fiancée?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

She rushes to him at the same time as he rushes to her, and their lips collide in a passionate, happy kiss. And the rug next to the tree is so soft they don’t need to make it to the bedroom at all.

* * *

When the big day comes, Damon finds himself nervous.

Of course, he knows there’s no reason to be. He’s going to marry the love of his life and he knows for a fact she can make him happy, does make him happy, and for any bad moment they might have they have a hundred amazing moments together.

He just never thought he’d get there. For all the pining for Elena he did, he had an idea of them kissing and making love (he had a _lot_ of ideas about the latter, actually) and going out and having fun. He never thought he would get anywhere near _this_ , real marriage in the real world with a very real possibility of children and growing old together.

And now this part excitement, part anxiety makes him fidget and order countless coffees and generally find the space on the plane somewhat confining.

There are two things he and Elena suck at other than serious conversations – attending big public events safely and dealing with bureaucracy. So eventually they’ve decided that Vegas is the easiest solution, after all.

They’ve picked a crisp, sunny October day – partly because they did want to have enough fun telling their friends at school and work about their engagement and partly because they just like the good October weather in Nevada. Of course, nothing could ruin this day for him, but he would prefer if they could have a walk and enjoy the sunlight before they go to their suite and take a long bubble bath and spend the night consummating the marriage.

(He loves using the phrase just for the sheer hilarity of it.)

They stop by the marriage bureau to get a license, then wait for Jeremy in a café, gorging on so many croissants they’ll probably need to work out for hours every day for the entire duration of their honeymoon. Jeremy is invited as a witness, though neither of them is entirely sure it’s a good idea. Finally, they see him getting out of a taxi and Elena rushes to hug him.

“Hey, little Gilbert,” says Damon as a way of greeting.

“I think you’re forgetting you’re not stronger than me anymore,” answers Jeremy, not even bothering to say hi.

“Wanna bet?”

“Oh, come on, boys.” Elena rolls her eyes. “Jer, do you have to take the bait? I know Damon’s an ass, but I’m marrying this ass today, and as our witness, I don’t think you should be fighting with the groom.”

“Ugh. Only for you, Lena.” Jeremy punches Damon’s shoulder, rather too painfully for a friendly gesture, and joins them at the table.

“Too late to pick somebody else to be the witness?” says Damon in a dramatic whisper, making sure Jeremy can hear it.

“Is there anyone else who survived walking in on you two making out as often as I did?”

Damon looks at Elena, pretending to be deep in thought. “Hmm… no, I killed everybody else.”

“Damon!” she shrieks, not nearly as scandalized as she’s acting, he can tell. “Okay, shall we go get married before you two have killed each other?”

“Sure.” He stands up and pulls her to her feet sharply, right into a kiss. “Where?”

Jeremy clears his throat.

They discussed doing it at the Office of the Commissioner of Civil Marriages, since they do not actually practice any religion, but suddenly, the idea seems to be lacking romance. It seems weird to spell out that whole phrase if somebody asks where they got married.

“Let’s just walk and see what we like,” suggests Elena. Arms linked, they set off to wander through Vegas streets, followed by a very chatty Jeremy.

They end up walking into a small, obscure chapel, filled to the brim with flowers and silky decorations, and the way Elena gasps looking at it all tells Damon all he needs to know.

Before long, the wedding is set in motion, but Damon barely hears what the polished middle-aged officiant says, his eyes never leaving Elena’s face, her radiant smile, her happy tears that she keeps wiping off but they still find a way to escape. She is wearing a gorgeous blue dress, the smooth silk falling gracefully to her feet. It makes Damon think of Miss Mystic Falls, that crappy, no-good, very bad day when in the midst of trouble and anxiety he danced with the woman standing opposite him now and part of him never wanted to let her go.

He’s holding her hands and looking into her eyes and the rest of the room may as well disappear right now. And even though they decided not to write the vows in advance, when they get to that part, he looks at Elena and knows exactly what he has to say.

“I’m pretty sure that not a lot of people can say the world has tried to tear them apart as hard as it did with us,” he starts, and they both share a laugh. “And yet, this is where we are. Once, you promised me that we would always survive. We had no idea what you were really talking about, but now we do, right?” She nods eagerly, more tears trailing down her cheeks. “I’m happy that we survived. I’m happy that we met and that we got to know each other – really got to know each other. That we got to love everything about each other, the good, the bad and the ugly. And I promise that I will love you, admire you, and remember every day of my life how damn lucky I am that we are together.”

Elena tightens her hold on his hands, looking on the verge of breaking down, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t even care if he is going to cry, because it’s their damn party and if there are happy tears, so be it.

“When I first met you, you were just a sexy, mysterious stranger in the middle of nowhere,” she says, not bothering with the tears any more. “Three years later, I told you that all I saw was a future with you. This is it, Damon, this is our future. This is our beginning, and wouldn’t have it with anyone else. You made me laugh and cry and feel more alive than I ever had before I met you, and that’s only part of the reasons why I love you so much. We both made a lot of terrible choices, but I don’t regret any of the choices that brought me here. No matter how much pain and fear and loss happened, I know I’ll always be able to look at that past and then look at you and say that it was all worth it.”

He barely feels his body, other than his pounding heart, when they say “I do.” Jeremy hands them the rings, one hand still firmly on Elena’s phone to take pictures, and Damon realizes his hands are shaking as he moves Elena’s engagement ring to her middle finger and slips the wedding band on her ring finger instead. Elena does the same with his hand, and he can’t look away from her and he’s pretty sure he is about to faint.

He doesn’t, though.

“Bride, groom,” says the officiant, calling for their attention, “you have formalized the bond between the two of you with spoken vows and with the giving and receiving of rings.”

“And having and sharing. And the love that they give and have is shared and received,” prompts Jeremy. Elena bursts out laughing first, then Damon does, too. The officiant smiles at them fondly.

“Well, you are a fun couple.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” says Damon, feeling a lot less weird now that the somewhat formal part is behind them.

“In that case, I’ll make it short. I wish you two to have a long, happy life together. I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss one another, because I can tell you’re dying to.”

They surge forward, lips meeting for a long, blissful moment, before they pull back just a little to look each other in the eye.

“Happy wedding… husband,” says Elena, grinning, and he traces his fingers gently over her cheeks, brushing off the remaining tears. He’s pretty sure he has a few of those, too.

“Happy wedding, wife.” He pulls her into a kiss again, ignoring Jeremy loudly clearing his throat in the background.

This is just the beginning, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and I would love it if you could drop me a line.


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